Once again—it seems like always—the Oakland Unified School District is suffering a budget crisis of unprecedented size. But then again so is Oakland itself. In case you’re wondering why Oakland is always running out of money, it’s because the city is corrupt. Top to bottom, left to right, inside and out, it’s run, as it has been for forty years, by racial agitators who represent—or claim to represent—one demographic group: Black people (occasionally broadened into the more politically-appealing “People of Color”). They jury-rig everything in the city for the benefit of Black people, whom they see as especially needing support. But the ironic, and tragic, thing is that the group they’re actually hurting the most, through their meddling, is Black people.
OUSD is particular is a nightmare of dystopian malfunction. The District has been one of the leaders of the woke movement in America, placing “diversity,” not actual learning, at the front and center of the curriculum. Pan-Africanism is big in the Oakland schools: McClymond’s High School, for example, recently launched an African center “that reflects Black history at McClymonds and in Oakland,” replete with art that depicts Huey Newton and Angela Davis. Great leaders to look up to, right? Can you imagine the fallout if the District launched a “White Center,” with paintings of Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk?
Much is made of the so-called “diaspora,” the historic journey of Black people from Africa to various end-points around the world. But the African diaspora is not a world event of overarching importance, any more than the Jewish diaspora or the Asian diaspora. Teachers’ unions in Oakland continue to demand reparations; a spokesperson for the Oakland Education Association has stated that the union’s work “is…deliberately done through a racial justice lens”—again, not through a lens of real education and widening students’ perspective, but one of ideology and propaganda. From the old Black Panther days to today, a model of “liberation education” dominates OUSD. It purports to help students of color see how “educational racism” perverts the entire system of American education by allegedly erasing authentic Black history and convincing Black children that they are not, and never can be, equal to White or Asian students. It presents misleading or outrightly false images of Black history, elevating the likes of George Floyd to heroic proportions. It teaches children that the sad state of many Black neighborhoods, including crime, garbage and encampments, is the result of gentrification, rather than dysfunctional and deviate behavior in the community itself.
This pervasive system of perceiving everything through a “racial justice lens” keeps old grievances going from generation to generation—grievances that ought to have been abandoned decades ago. It teaches Black children that they’re fundamentally different from everyone else, which is a lie. It imparts a resentment that tells them crime is simply a justified redistribution of wealth by other means. It fosters a sense of entitlement among Black youth, rather than a sense of responsibility. It celebrates silly things—remember the brouhaha over teaching “ebonics” in Oakland?—instead of preparing children to lead productive lives. It promotes “ethnic studies” as an authentic academic discipline, instead of what it is: A form of apartheid. It wastes enormous amounts of money on unqualified teachers, bloated administrators, and bogus consultants: and then when the budget explodes, the same forces that created the mess—unions, organized parents and their allies in government—fight any attempt to rein in OUSD’s spending. They hold angry protests; they attract the attention of television news cameras anxious to put anything controversial on T.V. Five angry protesters at City Hall are made to look like hundreds by T.V. news producers desperate for content. When school mergers are needed, as they have been for years, these protestors raise their fists and say, Never! And the fiscal bloodletting goes on. The unions not only stir up this anger, they weaponize it, bringing in speakers at City Council meetings to disrupt proceedings and intimidate council members. Ultimately—and this is the big disgrace--they’re confident that Oakland will always bail them out, no matter how irresponsible they’ve been; and anyway parcel taxes can always be imposed, because that’s how Communist and Socialist societies work: they drain every last penny from the productive classes (that’s you and me, folks) and hand it over to the loudest and least productive citizens. And thus the Soviet State of Oakland marches on, dragging the rest of us with it to a place we don’t want to go. It’s all so dreary, so ridiculous, so unnecessary, and yet time and time again, we elect these racialist boneheads to lead us.
Look, I’m not picking on Black identity politics. I think all identity politics is wrong and destructive. I’m Jewish, but I don’t like the Chabad sort of education (although it’s fine in private schools, if that’s what parents really want, as long as they don’t get my tax dollars). Ditto for LGBTQ education. Anyone who thinks of himself primarily in terms of sexual orientation is on a bad path. But no minority group has ever been as sclerotic or neurotic in their ethnic obsession as Black people.
We’re all in this together, friends. Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Straight, Gay, Bi, Trans, Christians, Jews, Wiccans, Hindus, non-believers, everyone! Our opponents, and they are many, want to divide us, and thus conquer us. Let’s not do their dirty work for them!
Steve Heimoff